Shadow Assassins, Review: If ULFA cannot get you, SULFA will India’s north-eastern state of Assam has always been a hotbed of militancy. Here is an excerpt from a 27 January 2022 report published in Outlook, by Nitin A. Gokhale “In a major fratricidal attack, militants of the banned United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) killed 14 of their former comrades, known collectively as SULFA (for surrendered ULFA) in upper Assam's Dibrugarh district, on Thursday morning. Ten other SU...

Dilli Kaand, Review: Those that rape and those that gape When a film is delayed six years in its release, its fate is more or less sealed. Dilli Kaand was launched in August 2015 and sees the light of day on 24 September 2021. Of course, the delay of the last 18 months can be attributed to the Covid 19 Coronavirus pandemic, when cinema-halls remained shut, but the six-year delay cannot be explained by Covid. Even now, cinema halls have only opened in some states of India, with conditions impo...

Kalank, Review: Masochistic miasma Everything in Kalank (blemish, stigma) is grand, both in content and in form. Sets and décor, riches and poverty, locales and vehicles, make-up and costumes, dances and fights, colours and luminance, all are designed to make your jaw drop in awe. All this opulence is merely the canvas on which a heart-wrenching tragedy is painted, around the time of India’s partition, with the entire ensemble cast at the receiving end of a woeful operatic wail, ...

Mirza Juuliet, Review by Siraj Syed: ‘Sex peer’ or Shakespeare Six timeless tales of doomed love continue to enjoy tremendous popularity in India, even in the 21st century: Laila-Majnu, Shirin-Farhad, Sohni-Mahiwal, Heer-Ranjha, Mirza-Sahibaa and Romeo and Juliet. Of these, five are Indian or from the sub-continent and only Shakespeare’s R&J makes it from the foreign category. India had its own Shakespeare, named Agha Hashr Kashmiri, who in the period 1920s-50s, transla...